


Mama Bear

by JustAnotherWriter (N1ghtshade)



Series: Advent Calendar Gift Fics [10]
Category: MacGyver (TV 2016)
Genre: Gen, Team as Family, Whump
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-10
Updated: 2018-12-10
Packaged: 2019-09-15 22:02:06
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,214
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16941495
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/N1ghtshade/pseuds/JustAnotherWriter
Summary: “I don’t want to be watching on a monitor the day your luck runs out.”Maybe Matty should have been a little more specific.Because she isn’t watching from a monitor as Mac is shot in the leg, grabbed, and dragged back to the facility he just managed to break out of with their undercover CIA agent and his intel. She’s watching from the back of the exfil van.





	Mama Bear

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Eienvine](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Eienvine/gifts).



“I don’t want to be watching on a monitor the day your luck runs out.” 

Matty still remembers saying that to Mac, the first week she met him. She meant it with all her heart.

Maybe she should have been a little more specific.

Because she isn’t watching from a monitor as Mac is shot in the leg, grabbed, and dragged back to the facility he just managed to break out of with their undercover CIA agent and his intel. She’s watching from the back of the exfil van. 

Which is pulling away, in the hands of the CIA team running this mission. Matty wants to jump out and run after Mac, but it would do no good at all. Instead, she resorts to shouting at the driver, a stern, stiff-faced agent who apparently does everything exactly as he’s told by his superiors. 

“I won’t compromise the entire mission for the sake of a consulting asset.” 

Matty could scream. She was CIA for years, she knows the drill. But that’s not just any asset they’re fully prepared to pull out of country without. That’s Angus MacGyver. That’s the closest thing she has to a son.

She knew agreeing to partner with the CIA to get one of the agents she used to be handler for was going to be a bad idea. It just hadn’t seemed like such a bad one. She knew the agency would pull rank on her, that she’d be second-guessed and treated like a burden until they really needed her and Mac to come through. But that’s just working with the CIA. She hadn’t anticipated things going so wrong. She hadn’t expected this.

“I’m not leaving my agent in there.” The only reason Mac got caught was because he was trying to create a distraction, trying to give Agent Hicks time to get to the van. Because the CIA agent had been so badly tortured he was barely able to walk. She can’t bear the thought of that happening to Mac. 

“I’ll go alone if I have to.” She could call Jack, he’d be here as fast as he could, broken arm be damned. But that’s not going to be good enough. Because by then these people could take Mac anywhere.

There’s a field Phoenix team only half an hour out, running another op. Matty knows where every field team is. She may not, contrary to Jack Dalton’s apparent belief, know everything, but she knows everything about the Phoenix’s actions around the globe. 

Before they even make it to exfil coordinates, she’s dialing a number only she knows.

“Oversight, I need permission to redirect team Alpha Tango to my location for an extraction. This is a priority mission.”

“I take it you misplaced my son.” James’s voice is calm, cold. 

“Your son was captured by the same people we just retrieved Agent Hicks from.”

“Alpha Tango’s mission is also a priority target. I can’t justify-”

Matty has heard more than enough. She’s never been fond of the callous way James treats any of his agents, especially not Mac. He always claimed he couldn’t show favoritism, that trying to keep Mac out of danger was giving him considerations other Phoenix agents wouldn’t get. She thinks it was always just an excuse to say he doesn’t place an ounce more value on Mac’s life than he would on a particularly useful piece of field tech.

“I’m not asking nicely. Get me that field team, James MacGyver, or I resign.” 

Mac might have a sorry excuse for a parent, but he has a family who will do anything for him. Matty wasn’t quite sure, when this all started, if she fit that description. She’s never been a family woman. She tried, but it wasn’t in the cards. The job always came first. 

But when she watches a black tac chopper land in the same place the CIA’s exfil helicopter flew out of a little more than half an hour earlier, she knows. If she’s willing to sacrifice her career, her safety, and quite possibly her life, to bring Mac home safely, she’s family. 

She remembers enough of Mac’s assessment of the facility to know there’s a weak spot in their defenses. A spot where the fencing surrounding the perimeter sags in a swamp, the support posts sinking into the mud. The team slogs their way through and takes up positions hidden behind a supply storage outbuilding. Matty sees a few propane tanks shoved against the wall, and she briefly smiles as the first thought across her mind is “what would Mac do?”

Five minutes later, amidst the chaos of explosions and gunfire, she and her team are breaching the facility’s doors. There’s no point in stealth now, Mac doesn’t have the intel the CIA lifted from this group, so they don’t need to keep the necessity of getting him out a secret. Besides, Matty’s itching to make a few of these guys hurt. She thinks she’s starting to understand why Jack is the way he is.  _ That’s a scary thought. _

They have Mac’s schematics of the place, they know where the interrogation rooms are. Matty doesn’t hesitate to take down the guard outside the first one, snatch his keys, and open the door.

Mac’s sitting in a chair, hair wet, head hanging, and a massive, raw gash on one arm, that looks like it was done with a serrated blade. Matty cringes. “Blondie?”

He mumbles something unintelligible and glances up, eyes wide and a bit unfocused. “Matty?”

She brushes Mac’s hair away from his eyes, checking for the concussion she already knows he has. “Ready to get out of here?” 

He groans, staggering to his feet when she cuts through the rope holding him. “Whenever you are.”

Matty doesn’t leave his side again the whole way home. 

He wasn’t there long, but it was long enough for Mac to flinch away from the unknown medical staff attached to this Phoenix field team. He doesn’t trust many doctors on a good day, and this isn’t one of those. He nearly decks the poor medical tech who was assigned to Alpha Tango. The tech is new, he probably hasn’t deal with MacGyver before, because he doesn’t even really give a warning before he starts trying to disinfect the cut on Mac’s arm.

“Listen, I’ll handle this,” Matty says. She knows Mac would rather do this himself, but who knows what kind of jungle slime and dirt made it into that cut, and it needs to be treated properly. It’s on his right arm, or Matty  _ might  _ have handed the medical kit over when he reached for it. Instead, she opens it herself.

Matty carefully cleans the gash, wrapping it carefully. He’ll need to go to medical the second they get stateside, but as far as field treatment goes, she’s seen worse. Much worse. 

“Thank you.” Mac picks at the edge of the bandage until Matty swats his hand away.

“Don’t thank me if you’re just going to undo my good work.”

“Not just for this. For coming back for me,” Mac whispers softly. 

Matty says nothing. How do you tell someone who thinks you might despise them a little, that you care so much you’d risk your career, your life, everything, to keep them safe?


End file.
